


A Grandmother’s Right

by Skyberrie (LyaStark)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Padmé Amidala Lives, Rey Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 06:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17523446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyaStark/pseuds/Skyberrie
Summary: The way Padme sees it, a life on the run as a rebel, a refugee, and a mother has earned her the right to spoil her grandchildren.





	A Grandmother’s Right

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ficlet a couple years ago for for Jedifest. So on the off chance that this looks familiar, that's why.

****“Really, Mom?”

Padme turned her son with innocently arched eyebrows.

“Did you really have to get them their own holotables and that Galactic Rebels game and all that candy?” Luke clarified.

“Why not?” Padme asked, turning back to watch Anakin guide Rey in executing the perfect Form V against an imaginary opponent. Leia chimed in on the lesson every so often to tease or make suggestions. Anakin caught Padme’s eye and gave her a wink that made her look away with a silly grin. Even after decades of marriage, he could still bring a flush to her cheeks. “Why can’t we give our grandchildren a few presents now and again?”

Luke laughed. “Now and again? More like twice a week or more.”

“That’s a grandmother’s right,” she insisted.

In truth, guilt was the reason Padme went to such extremes with her grandchildren. A part of her would always ache with regret at failing to provide Luke and Leia with the happy childhoods they deserved. Perhaps that led her to overcompensate with Rey and Ben, showering them with the gifts and joy she never had time to give either of their parents.

She didn’t confide that in her son though, because she knew what he would say. Luke, her earnest boy – yes, still  _her_  boy, though a grown man in his thirties – would insist that no one had ever had a better childhood. After all, how many others could brag about taking his first steps on a starship while his father flew circles around the Imperial forces and learning to use a blaster at ten? Only Leia, and she probably had even better stories to tell.

Padme knew he wouldn’t mention all the times he complained as an angst ridden teenager that he never got to spend more than a few months in one place. Though it must be said that Luke’s sulks were no match for Leia’s rages at Padme and Anakin for ruining her life before it even had a chance to begin. Her children had longed for home and stability and safety. And Shiraya’s word! Padme had wanted that  _for_  them. But beyond a few moments snatched here and there, stability had very little to do with her family’s life from the moment it began at the start of the Clone Wars.

In the weeks following their marriage and Anakin’s departure from the Jedi Order, all that existed was a sweet and simple happiness for them. Nothing but blue sky days and starry nights where they swam beneath the moons in Naboo’s Lake Country. That all ended when she returned to her duties with the senate.

What plagued them most in those early days when they returned to Coruscant was Anakin’s restlessness. His time as Obi-Wan’s Padawan hadn’t prepared him for a life of political dinners and dull days alone. Had he remained with the Jedi, he would have become a general in the war. His life would have been adventure and battle and a few respites with her before returning to the fray. Padme had begun to wonder if he resented her. She feared that if it was possible to go back and make a different choice between marrying her or staying with the Jedi, he would do so in a second. So she had asked him outright during an argument they had one morning over how little time she had to spare for him between the bills that must be put before the senate, meetings that went well into the night, and security measures that must be settled given the new military climate.

“You knew going into this marriage that I have a duty as a public servant,” she had said. “But that’s not all this is about, is it? This marriage isn’t what you thought it would be. If you want out, tell me now and-”

“No!” Anakin had rushed forward and cupped her face in his hand, kissing her intensely. “No,” he insisted again. Anakin pulled Padme close and tucked her under his chin. “I just- I wasn’t made for all this sitting around.”

 “Then don’t sit around,” Padme had said into his chest. “There is plenty of good that can be done in the galaxy even outside of the Jedi Order.”

“Like joining the Coruscant police?” He laughed into her hair.

“Or working with the war effort, protecting refugees…” She paused, weighing her next words. “Or helping the slaves on Tatooine.” She felt him stiffen. “Isn’t that what you told me you wanted? Going back to free them one day?”

“It was,” he said. “It is.”

“Then why not now?”

As expected, talking about bringing an end to a system of slavery was far easier than actually accomplishing it. The policy ideas and plans they made met with very little enthusiasm from officials even on Coruscant and even a great amount of resistance, souring Anakin’s view of the Senate even more. But Padme noticed that the worst blow for her husband was Chancellor Palpatine’s indifference.

“He’s not the man we thought he was,” Anakin confided. “He doesn’t care about the people in this galaxy at all. At least not the ones who live in slavery and can’t help his agenda.”

Though not surprised, Padme felt something close to betrayal as well. She respected the chancellor as a mentor and a politician.

“He wants me to be patient, but it’s all a lie,” Anakin said. “The chancellor wants me to take part in the war.”

“Is that what you want?” Padme asked. Her husband shook his head. “Good.”

She didn’t learn the exact details of Anakin’s efforts on Tatooine until years later. But while she struggled with the political side of the Clone Wars, reports came of him steadily drawing followers and instigating uprisings among the slaves. Both of their paths took them away from each other for long stretches of time and reaped varying degrees of success. But that only made their brief and few times together all the sweeter and more desperate.

It hurt having to tell Anakin about her pregnancy over a recorded holo she entrusted to a messenger, but she had told herself that the work they each did was all for the greater good of the galaxy. Little did she know that with Order 66, Anakin’s work would end unfinished and hers would prove futile at best.  

“The twins will never be safe so long as Palpatine is alive,” Obi-Wan told them once they all met up together in the aftermath of the Empire’s birth. “No force-sensitive children will be safe.”

“Separate them, we must,” Yoda added. “From each other and from each of you as well.”

“No!” Padme and Anakin had shouted as one.

“Absolutely not,” Padme said in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Our kids stay with us,” Anakin insisted.

And for better or for worse, they did. Luke and Leia spent their formative years eating ration packs on the go, lying about their names, and racing onto transports with bounty hunters or Stormtroopers on their heels. Sometimes the family would separate to throw off the Emperor’s agents, Padme taking Luke and Anakin escaping with Leia or vice versa. Sometimes Padme or Anakin would take both twins while the other joined Obi-Wan or Bail in a mission for the Rebellion. No matter the combination, they learned to make themselves useful and mundane to their temporary neighbors, often posing as mechanics.

Even in those days, Padme longed for her children to have something better. How she wished she could have raised them on Naboo. Luke’s compassion and genial but firm nature would have made him a fine public servant. He could have followed in her footsteps in joining the Apprentice Legislators and the Legislative Youth Program. He might even have served as king or senator or both, as she had. Those opportunities were closed to him and Leia both. But being a rebel, and therefore a true public servant, were not out of their reach.

Life on the run made self-defense lessons necessary. Padme taught them how to shoot a blaster while Anakin trained them in the Force. It was only a matter of time before the twins graduated from merely utilizing their abilities to protect themselves to insisting on using those skills to aid the Rebel Alliance. Leia flew and fought with the same daring recklessness as her father, while Luke learned patience and diplomacy at Padme’s knee. They both served as assets to the Alliance in the waning years of the Empire and dreamed of restoring some semblance of the Jedi Order – or their version of it.

Padme couldn’t even say that Luke and Leia’s childhoods had been cut short. Their childhoods had not existed at all. She would not let that happen to the next generation of their family. Rey and Ben and any other grandchildren the twins gave her would know happiness and safety in their family. They would know of only stability even in a galaxy that was far from healed from the wounds of the Empire.

“Listen, I know you’d give them the whole galaxy if you could,” Luke said, raking his fingers through that blond hair of his. “But spoiling them like this isn’t exactly the Jedi way.

“Neither is marrying or raising your own children.” Padme gave him a pointed look. “The Jedi way was never a good fit for this family. We go our own way. And sometimes that means a bit of spoiling.”


End file.
